• Finished Projects

Last time: I’m making period 18th century underwear for my Joker/Marie Antoinette cosplay. (Design here. See first, second and third posts about making underwear.)

Next on my list for Joker Antoinette is giving her proper hip and booty padding under her skirt.

I did a bunch of research, though I didn’t find much, other than this satirical cartoon:

So I just made mine up.

I’ve made three sets of pads. First, a little bum puffer.   It helps fill in the corset that was fitting too loosely at the bottom. It’s stuffed with a wedge-shaped piece of mattress foam. Actually, this was the corset padding I ended up rejecting in my second post on Joker Antoinette’s underwear. I repurposed it for another body part by covering it in cotton and adding a twill waist tie.

The second set of padding is the hip pads.

When I was designing these, the genius of Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, and Isaac Newton came down from the heavens and slapped me with a GREAT idea.

Why not make hip pads with pockets for water bottles???

Then I can smuggle in carry my hydration with me during the two long, hot days I’ll be spending at Comic-Con Germany! And I’ll let you in on an old trick from my days at kids’ tennis camp. FREEZE the bottles the night before so they keep you cool when you carry them. And throughout the day, they slowly release ice cold liquid water for you to drink.

Is that a good idea what??!

If you want to make them yourself, good news! I’ve made made a FREE downloadable pattern for you. Get it here!

Joker Antoinette’s last pad is this big bum apron thing. It’s inspired by the lady on the far right in the bum shop cartoon at the beginning of the post. I wish I had made it an eensy bit bigger so that it would cover more of my sides. Oh well.

Normally I would have used batting to stuff it, but I had this stuff:

It’s wool batting that came as insulation when I tried ordering some food online. I’ve had it in my basement since 2014, waiting to find a use for it. It smells slightly of hay – that will confuse anyone with a sharp sense of smell who comes near me.

To keep the batting in place,  I (sloppily) quilted in place in two vertical lines at the back.

With the padding on, I look like a hybrid between a woman and a couple jet-puffed marshmallows.

The next step is making the petticoats!